Manchester escapades

Will and I went on a little trip to Manchester recently, as his folks had gotten us some vouchers to stay in a fancy hotel for 2 nights as a birthday present (Thanks, Sue and Ken!) and it had been a while since we went for a little holiday.

 We did the full-on tourist bit and went to the museum to see the dinosaur bones and lizard house before accidentally getting lost in an industrial estate - damn you google maps!

Then we went to this amazing patisserie for some treats...

Wowza.

I was sad that we didn't get a chance to visit Duke's 92, which is apparently this amazing bar/restauranty type place that has all this amazing cheese and pate, served with freshly-baked bread. Sadly, this was the point when google maps decided to take us on a wild goose chase and we ran out of time. However, we did manage to get to Affleck's, which was this Vintage emporium - an amazing big building that was at least five stories of little individual shops. We got Will this amazing buttery leather jacket, it looks like something James Taylor would've worn in the 70s!

We also went along to the John Rylands library - a beautiful old building which had an exhibition on "50 years of A Clockwork Orange" - fascinating and bizarre. They had props from the films, letters which Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick wrote to each other, the typewriter that Burgess wrote it on...

And his thoughts concerning typewriters...

 I really want a typewriter now. I got a copy of the book on the way out, as I've never read it before - wow. It's even more unintelligible than the film! In the exhibition, they talked about the fact that by reading the book, you are being brainwashed into getting an understanding of Russian slang, which sort of sets you up for the concept of brainwashing later in the story.

On our way to get the megabus home (classy), we spotted this interesting bit of artwork on the side of a multi-storey car park - I wonder if someone had been contracted to put it there, or was it the work of some kind of yarn-bombing graffiti artist?